


When there's no more fight

by Nothing_but_the_Rain



Category: Starfighter (Comic)
Genre: Cancer and terminal illness, Character Death, M/M, Medical, end of life care
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-16
Updated: 2013-04-16
Packaged: 2017-12-08 17:17:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/763962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nothing_but_the_Rain/pseuds/Nothing_but_the_Rain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cain has cancer. Deimos' POV of his last few days. (sorry).</p>
            </blockquote>





	When there's no more fight

**Author's Note:**

> Cain = Sasha; Abel = Ethan; Praxis = Athanasios
> 
> This is based heavily on my experience of my first love and best friend, Tim's death back in 2008.  
> I was blessed to be with him, his wife and family for most of his last four days.
> 
> [Edit: It has occured to me that I've borrowed from Fannon/others headcannon for things in this - mostly from a-socaial-construct: Thanks for Sasha's name and Tasha their daughter and probably other things to boot. And thanks to Violetnyte for making Deimos/Praxis my otp.]

I can’t take my eyes off his face, it’s him but not him. Despite how weak he is he holds my hand firmly. There’s no complaining machinery now. Now need for observations of vital signs. No more blood tests or transfusions.

I watch his lips as he breaths; laboured with worrying gaps.

Ethan shifts on the chair at the other side of the bed, eyes equally drinking in every last second of Sasha. He reaches up stroking over the sparse stubble on Sasha’s crown. The little bit that had grown back after all the chemo had mostly come away again. He’d let Tasha, their daughter, cut it into a Mohawk during the few months of hopeful remission whilst waiting for a matching donor from the bone marrow register, but with more chemo it was mostly gone again.

All hope dashed now though. Match found but the leukaemia didn’t give a fuck about that, instead it had moved back in like some unwanted lover, squatting like a crack-head living in its own filth, destroying the home that sheltered it.

Ethan had called four days ago, when the Doctors had confirmed Sasha was terminal, heaving sobs down the line, so that I’d gone cold to my core, knowing what he meant without needing to hear the words. Terminal in the sense of days, hours, minutes; one heartbeat to the next.

They hadn’t told Sasha by the time I arrived. Natasha, his sister, saying that maybe it would be better, kinder, if he didn’t know, set up the drugs and just let him slip away.

Ethan and I wanted to tell him. Knew that’s what he would want. Meet it head on; with snarling determination ~ fuck death. Sasha had known something was up anyway when Athanasios had brought me to his bedside, squeezed my shoulder and told me to call if I needed him, knowing I wouldn’t leave his side, not until the end.

We’d stood in the anti-room, Ethan, Natasha and I, and whispered our disagreement; me, mouth tight, arms across my chest, Ethan stalwart and determined, Natasha tears streaming down her cheeks; until Sasha bellowed, Gods knows what that had cost him in precious seconds of life; shouting that if we didn’t tell him what the fuck was going on that instant he’d get out of bed and deck the first one of us he got to.

Ethan had gone back in alone, back straight, ending any argument. Told him. Held him in the quiet space of knowing there isn’t any more chance of winning, that the race is run and the fight lost. Held him as he accepted it. Then Ethan called his mother, who’d been looking after Tasha.

Sasha wanted one more day with his daughter, lucid, sucking down the pain like bile, so he could say goodbye to her in his own way, one last good memory, hold her little body in his arms, kiss her hair, before they asked the Doctor to set up the syringe drivers to deliver the diamorphine and fentanyl, reduce the pain, let him start to drift, smooth the end.

I couldn’t stay for that, not only could I not intrude on the intimacy of shared joy and pain, sweet sorrow; but that I couldn’t stand the hurt of seeing it. Tasha knowing but not understanding too young yet, only seven.  Sasha laughing when he wanted to cry. Ethan trying to be strong for them all, when he was ready to come apart and blow away like ashes on the wind.

I went to a nearby pub instead. Ordered vodka and dark beer, called Thanos. When he came we just sat and drank, me with my head on his shoulder, not speaking even had it been easy for me, I wouldn’t have; what was there to say?

When the message came that Ethan’s mum had taken Tasha home Thanos walked me back to the hospital in silence. Kissing me on the forehead as he left me at the door to the ward.

They never could say for sure what had caused the cancer, in someone so young, only twenty nine when he was diagnosed. Some random radiation in ‘teron space as likely a reason as any other. Sasha had fought so hard, determined to tackle everything head on, take as much joy in life as possible, plan for the future that might be, but live for the present that was. But there are some things you just can't fight in the end; they’re bigger and stronger, faceless and uncaring.

The doctors and nurses were amazed with Sasha during those last days, apparently someone so heavily drugged shouldn’t be able to make occasional comments, let alone turn themselves to prevent the worsening of the pressure sores that were beginning on his skinny frame, or lean up to piss in one of the disposable urine bottles.

Somewhere in the third day he’d started moving his arms. A strangely familiar pattern of movements that we couldn’t place. When we asked the nurse she asked if there was something he had done a lot of in the past? Citing patients who, at a similar stage in their ending, had turned the pages of a news paper or played computer games. Muscle memory.

Sasha was blasting ‘terons in the Reliant.

Petechiae broke out over his skin, pinprick haemorrhages telling of the larger haemorrhages deep inside, as his platelet levels dropped, less clotting factors, less clotting. Occasionally some evidence of the internal bleeding made itself apparent from one end or the other. To be dabbed away, wiped clean by Ethan and I.

I’m staring at him, feasting my eyes on this terrible sight because I don’t want it to end, because what comes after is more terrible still, a world without Sasha.

I’m staring at his face so intently that I nearly jump away when, with sudden strength, he grabs my face with both hands, pulls me to him, pressing his dry lips to mine, eyes wide. “Love you.” He says, and it’s razor blades in my heart.

“I love you too, broheim.” I say, a choked whisper, my heart breaking my ribs.

He turns to Ethan, lifts his hand to his mouth kissing the knuckles, eyes saying everything he can’t, “Love you, Princess.”

Then quite again. He lies back with a soft sigh, and there’s nothing but the occasional whirr of the syringe drivers and the on-off-ness of his breathing. Cheyne-Stokes respiration the nurse had called it when Ethan asked.

Hours later we are still holding his hands, not moved, any of us. Sasha breaths in and that’s it. My world come undone. If Thanos is my rock, Sasha was my Sun and that star has winked out and I’m drifting, I can feel the lightness spread through my limbs as tears streak my face. Ethan and Natasha are sobbing. I’m silent. There is none of me left.

Later while Ethan and Natasha are laying him out, I sit in the court yard of the hospital in a patch of sunshine ~ funny how the world can still be sunny and bright when the Sun has ceased to exist ~ and call Thanos. I’m numb now, no tears, no pain, it isn’t real yet and I know it will hit at sometime; the loss, the grief, but just now I’m numb. He answers. My rock. “He’s gone, he’s gone, he’s gone...” I whisper like a mantra until my voice runs dry.

“Deimos...” Is all he says and I know he’ll come to pick up my pieces again.


End file.
